Veteran Airline Exec to Lead OneWorld

New York: The Oneworld alliance is getting a makeover that includes a veteran airline executive at its helm and a move to Park Avenue.
During a 23-year airline career, Bruce Ashby, a trilingual 49-year-old Stanford graduate, has been a top executive atUS Airways and has also worked at United and Delta.
Ashby will return to the U.S. after five and a half years abroad, heading India's Indigo Airlines and Saudi Arabia's SAMA. He presided over the successful star-tup of the former; the latter failed in September.
Meanwhile, Oneworld's headquarters will leave Vancouver, B.C., next summer after 10 years and move to 2 Park Ave., also the New York office for Oneworld members including American and British Airways.
The move reflects the increasing importance of the three global alliances, spurred this year by regulatory approval of three key partnerships that combine major U.S. carriers with counterparts in Europe and Japan. The partnerships enable multiple carriers to act as one on trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific routes, which generally constitute the industry's most profitable operations.
The three big U.S. carriers -- American, Delta and United -- each anchor an alliance: Oneworld, SkyTeam and Star, respectively. A principal strength of Oneworld, whose members also include Iberia, Japan Air Lines and Cathay Pacific, is that it dominates one of world aviation's prized routes, New York to London Heathrow.
10/12/10 The Street

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Categories: Foreign Dec 2010, Indigo Airlines Dec 2010